Phan Huy Quat

Phan Huy Quat (12 June 1908-27 April 1979) was Prime Minister of South Vietnam in 1965, succeeding Nguyen Xuan Oanh and preceding Nguyen Cao Ky.

Biography
Phan Huy Quat was born in Loc Ha, Ha Tinh Province, French Indochina in 1908, and he worked as a doctor before entering politics. He became Minister of Education in 1949 under Bao Dai's French puppet regime, and he also served as Defense Minister in 1950 and then from 1953 to 1954. In 1954, he served as interim Prime Minister until Ngo Dinh Diem was appointed to that position by Bao Dai. In 1960, Diem had Quat jailed for his opposition to his government, but he was released after the 1963 South Vietnamese coup and named Foreign Minister by Nguyen Khanh. He served until November 1964, and, after Tran Van Huong was ousted from power in a 1965 coup, Quat became the new Prime Minister. On 8 March, he called his assistant Bui Diem and alerted him of the arrival of the first three US Marine Corps battalions at Da Nang during the Vietnam War, and both of them were unhappy about the unilateral US involvement in the war. After leaving the premiership, he returned to his medical practice. In August 1975, he was captured by the communists after failing to escape from Vietnam, and he died of liver failure in 1979.